<i>AdWeek</i> Celebrates The Best Of The Aughts

We're only a couple of weeks away from 2010, and that means it's time for every publication still in existence to start doing a "Best Of The Decade" list like its VH1's entire programming line-up. Lists are great because they are fun, subjective, and get people talking. We've seen Time magazine take that idea to heart in its recent issue, and today AdWeek has rolled out a slew of decade-spanning "Best Of" lists that are sure to get some media executives primping their feathers...and others grinding their teeth. As the editors said in their foreword, the winners this year "weren't all 21-year-old whiz kids," which is a relief from what we heard a decade ago when talking about Internet branding and marketing. The Media Company of the Decade award was a no-brainer; the title went to Google for its "game-changing, pay-per-click ad model" which "helped pull the left-for-dead online advertising business out of the post-Web 1.0 recession." Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google also won the Web Entrepreneurs of the Year award. More of Adweek's "Bests" after the jump We can already hear the heated debates about Media Executive of the Year, which went to Rupert Murdoch for not taking the Internet's dilution of print journalism "laying down." You do have to give it to Murdoch though: when he has beef, even all-mighty Google has to respond. Still, the reader's choice was Steve Jobs, and he just seems like he deserves an award so much more than grumpy Murdoch. Condé Nast's Wired won Magazine of the Year, another odd choice considering how Wired is often pointed to as an example of Condé's backwards thinking: that they would focus their technology title in print at the expense of its digital readership. Blog of the year went to Gawker, though its funny to note that as reader's pick it came up eighth, competing against all the other titles in the Gawker empire (Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Deadspin) that fared much better. Maybe the New York media niche isn't all that interesting, after all. Important, yes. Relevant to anyone not in media or living in the small bubble of New York? Maybe not. Website of the Decade went to YouTube, for "ushering in the notion of consumer as mini-media mogul," and creating what we now think of as super syndication -- the ability to embed your product on other people's sites. YouTube also managed to do the unthinkable for a Web company, namely, not promise more than they could deliver, or "its influence over consumers' expectations." Read More: Best Of The 2000s --Adweek Previously: Can Google Be The Answer To Newspapers Problems?, Wired's Anderson: "The Free Vs. Paid Debate Is Misunderstood"

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AdWeek Celebrates The Best Of The Aughts

Drew Grant

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Drew Grant